Civilization VI

Games
2638

I haven’t logged in to this site for a while, but I wanted to pop in to say last night I was able to win a relatively “pacifistic” Cultural victory with Kongo yesterday on Immortal mode. (I’ve never won ANY Civ game before 6 on anything higher than “King” or the equivalent, so I have to admit I’m kind of proud).

Kongo gets huge bonuses to production, food, and gold from having “Themed” Archeological Museums. With the Theming bonus, their Museums are more powerful than actual World Wonders. Good thing, because on that difficulty the AI’s advantages will allow them to steal most of the Wonders from you.

I managed to play most of the game with pretty good relations with the AI players. Rome kept denouncing me early on because my empire was too small, but he stopped once I grew to a certain point. The AI gives you bonuses to your relationship when they think you’re giving them favorable trades. So I think what helped is that I was able to “fool” the AI into thinking they were totally ripping me off on trades that were giving me what I wanted.

For example, I might have too many Portraits and not enough Art slots (because I build all Archeology Museums). So I’m willing to trade the AI a famous Portrait and a captured spy for a generic Barbarian mask from the Ancient era. The Mask seems worthless, but because I need one more “Ancient” item in a museum it gives me a Theming bonus that doubles the production, food, gold, and culture coming out the museum.

My score was in dead last most of the game, but once I started to get the themed museums going in multiple cities I took the cultural lead. Plus Kongo’s special district replaces Neighborhoods, and they have really low production requirements. So once your production is up you can have new housing in a turn or two by building new neighborhood districts. (I’m also playing with the game speed set to “Online”, so all production times are shortened).

I was able to avoid getting involved in a war entirely up until the 1920’s. I could see that the Aztecs and Russians were both building Space Victory components. But I was so focused on Culture that I had totally neglected to build up my Science and military, so all I could do was send out spies to sabotage their spaceports and industrial zones.

Finally around the 1920’s Peter declared a surprise war on me. I still had crossbowmen at the time and only had the technology to build infantry. He came in with Mechanized infantry and artillery that should have been able to crush my cities, but all they did was drive around and pillage while my cultural lead continued to grow. When I thought I was a turn away from a getting enough Tourists for a Cultural victory, Gigamesh and the Aztecs both joined in the war against me. But they didn’t have any units near me so all I had to do was wait it out under the Russian siege until I got the Cultural Victory around 1938.

2639

This is so sad, though. I mean, grats on the victory with such ludicrous handicap bonuses stacked against you, but what’s the point of giving the AI all those bonuses if they’re too dumb to use them? Two artillery and two mechanized infantry should pretty much have won on their own vs. crossbowmen. I bet you need like 6-8 shots from a crossbow to kill an artillery unit, and a mechanized infantry can kill a crossbow outside a city in a single attack.

2640

Yeah, even when I started buying infantry they started getting killed in the field in one shot, unless I combined them. I just built/bought whatever Infantry and AT troops I could and hid/waited.

Looking back, I’m not even sure the AI made the “wrong” move by pillaging and sieging me. Although I had no ability to counterattack them with field units, I don’t know how long it would have taken them to take down a size 26 Information Age city with artillery (I’ve never tried doing the reverse). The siege cut off my money an interfered with buying/upgrading my existing units. Plus they damaged my factory district which affects a bunch of cities because I didn’t build redundant power plants.

The trade screen showed that Peter had a trait called “Nuke Happy”, so I think if I wasn’t already just a few tourists away from winning it wouldn’t have gone well.

2641

Three artillery should I think take down a modern city in around three turns. Fewer if the AI doesn’t mind flinging mech infantry at the defenses and taking some losses.

2642

The inland map is HUGE. The outer edges are mostly useless tundra, so they are barb country. A warrior in each of the passes keeps the northern border safe forever. Then you go clockwise/counterclockwise to find the civs. I play ICS (5 hexes apart?) with cities in clusters of 3-4. I rarely get to build a third cluster (thus 9-10 cities) before I get bored and abandon the game. The only reason I stop building settlers is because factories are unlocked and it’s just more profitable to build factories/power plants.

The clover maps are interesting (4 and 6 nodes). The AI is very aggressive and often attacks by the time you get to third city. If you stick it out too close to the center, expect heavy attacks. That was interesting, and I got caught with my pants down pretty early.

I haven’t played in a while but I think the key to early game may be to PARK a warrior on a hilltop between the camps and your cities. This scares off the scout. Playing whack-a-mole with the barb camps is neverending. Sometimes you won’t be able to kill the camp (certainly one lone warrior can’t handle it later on). And if you DO kill the camp, you have to catch that scout because it now switches to CARAVAN pillage mode, which costs you $200 or so. :(

Lastly, to address the point about different civ seeds, China tends to get swamped by barb horsies :) I think they really want you to build those great wall improvements.

2643

This game as Poland on a huge fractal map (Prince) is my most frustrating game yet. Aside from the aforementioned idiotic crowding of the civs in my general vicinity, there is a drive for the AI to settle a city right between two of mine, even if there is a single hex dividing my two borders (i.e. they aren’t connected). Egypt succeeded first when she was a friend of mine and there was a gap of about three hexes, then she declared war and she had that city razed by one of my allied city states. After peace with her, Germany (also friendly) made a beeline for settling in the exact same spot so I bought up some tiles quickly to reduce that to a one hex line of four tiles, and I plunked a horseman down on that spot (to try to make it unfriendly). Germany avoided that location but moved a few hexes up and dropped his city in a hole between a city state border and my two city borders, with practically no room for growth. I thought there’d be a buffer around the border so other civs can’t crowd you in like this. Is this new behaviour? I don’t recall it being this bad before.

In fact, this huge map is so crowded in my area that I’m considering abandoning it for the first time in any civ game I’ve played. The reason I play huge maps is for the space, but I’ll have to consider changing up some other settings to make it happen as I’m not liking the forced aggression by overcrowding.

2644

Forward-settling (the AI dropping cities in really annoying places for you) has been an ongoing tactic in VI, but they’ve tweaked the settler AI so that a “frustrated” settler doesn’t wander around aimlessly. I suspect what you just saw was a likely unintended consequence of that tweak.

2645

Huh, yep, I hope its unintended and fixable. It’s a waste of a settler to do that kind of drop with little benefit coming from it rather than settling one of the other wide open areas of the world with a tonne of resources just sitting there for the taking. It’s not like Germany’s primary civ settlement was anywhere near me. They literally traveled past other open areas and other civs to get to that point. It’s as if the AI was determined to do everything to keep my city borders from connecting.

Should point out that Egypt beat my settler to that exact point by one turn. I usually like leaving some grow space between cities, but when I noticed Egypt making tracks for that area I knew it was going to be trouble. Guess I’ll change my tactics in future games to compensate, keeping a close overlapping cluster instead.

[Edit] Just continued playing and Germany declared war on me. After a time, I took the city that was between my two cities so that will settle any problem I have there. Spain now declared war on me, too. Of all the games I’ve played, this new one with Poland has got to be the most unstable in terms of diplomacy, and I’m doing the worst of any game so far (not leading in anything).

2646

This is a bit funny, I have been talking to a friend who plays VERY well about which civs in this game are the strongest.

Now I started looking up some guides on the subject, and boy are they wrong, this is a bit impressive of CIV 6 to actually be some complex that its been hard to get who are best.

If you look at some of the lists, they actually have America up first…some have gotten Russia correctly , as 2nd…none have figured out what absolute powerhouse Kongo is, infact right now, they are so badass they can win the game in 100 rounds…if done correctly…

My friends done that…so its proven…

2647

For those unaware, the only way to launch the game in DX12 mode is via the Play button in one’s Steam Library. Firaxis has yet to add support for Steam Launch Options, but I hope they eventually do.

2648

I just googled the best civs in civ 6. These lists are all over the place. Sometimes Russia is at the top and other times near the bottom. Some people put Montezuma as the best and others the worst. I do not think anyone really knows. How can you even really test it when even the worst civ can easily beat the AI?

2649

I finally got around to winning my first game last night. Talk about a slog. The turns got longer and longer near the end. Standard-sized world. Mainly consisted of me hitting the turn button over and over about 20 times to build the Mars colony parts.

2650

The only way to win is to not play - WOPR

2651

Just popping in here to pat myself on the back and say that I just won a Cultural Victory with Kongo on Deity level.

If you can avoid war as much as possible (and are lucky enough to find room to expand without stepping on too many toes), the AI can’t compete with what Kongo gets from a full set of Themed Museums:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/100603690271730948/24B0F4F2BFCE324D6F0FE8EBCD4227F2FC0C1FF8/

Just resign yourself to the fact that you can’t hope to out compete them with Wonders. But you start with so many Great Work slots you can just use the trade screen to buy religious relics from the AI early on, then use that initial production boost to get started until you can get the Archeological Museums up and running.

2652

In my opinion, the way to enjoy this game is to give up and admit victory sometime during the mid-game. It’s really fun for 100-200 turns. Later on, it’s about as exciting as a lawn-growing sim. There comes a point where you know you’re going to win; don’t let your OCD side push you into wasting hours proving it to yourself. :)

2653

I usually play with the game speed set to “Online”, even in singleplayer. That way you don’t have to slog through as many turns.

With the AI’s research advantage, you still get into the exiting “disrupt AI rocketry through spying” race.

2654

I always enjoyed playing previous Civ games through at least the industrial age. They generally captured the rapid change of that time really well and going through that with your civ was fun. Within a couple of techs you’d unlock both railroads and factories. Suddenly, your workers were useful again(build a railroad network fast!) and the result was that it went from taking many turns for units to cross your empire to now being able to make that trip in one or two turns. That certainly changed how you needed to distribute units and felt very thematically appropriate.

Factories were the same way. Suddenly, your cities production jumped considerably which often made it worth rushing to get factories into all of your cities as fast as possible.

The last couple of games(espeically VI) have largely done away with that, and I assume it’s for balance reasons. Industrial zones are unlocked much sooner now and factories feel less impactful. The fact that they made them affect multiple cities was cool, but then removing the stacking of that effect made it far less so. Railroads are just entirely gone now and roads upgrade incrementally.

These aren’t huge things, but it does make me far less likely to play a game through to see how my civ looks and feels post-industrialization. I’ve always appreciated that the gameplay in Civilization evolved as a somewhat reasonable interpretation of history and I’m sad when that starts to erode.

2655

Yeah, I always loved building railroads. It meant nearly instantaneous communication between cities, and it looked cool. The way roads are handled in Civ VI may well be more realistic, in that trade routes leading to road nets makes sense, but it isn’t as satisfying at all.

2656

G’day, mate!

2657

I actually am surprised to say but I think there feels like more strategic diversity in Civ V’s opening despite VI’s emphasis on number crunching. The big problem for me is that bonuses for city states are so huge finding them first can double or more your starting output, so every faction regardless of bonuses goes City State hunting. And because the AI is so aggressive, every faction should just go to war with their neighbors as a matte of course. And Religion / Pantheon bonuses are so bad in Civ VI faith centered strategies seem pretty rarified and specific (some kind of faith rushed unit span maybe?).

In V I’ll actually do different sorts of things with the different factions that early - in VI I’m using the same strategy over and over. Maybe at Diety level play these differences matter but around King they don’t matter near as much until you hit their “unique unit” spam time.